Memoirs of Strange Meals and Time Abroad

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Most of my first week in China is a blur. I don’t know if it was just adrenaline, or every waking moment being more bizarre than the last, but a large part of my memory gap is probably because of the time I spent waiting in lines. Whether you are activating your bank card or connecting to your dorm’s wifi, you soon find out that in China nothing is as easy as it should be. Every simple transaction is dragged out into a bureaucratic nightmare. Take the bank card for example: After a two-hour wait (and 30 minutes of Chinese-to-English translation practice with the teller), I discovered my school had not given the bank my middle name. So because the name in their system did not exactly match the name in my passport, I couldn’t access my account. Now this is all in the computer, I figured, so it should be an easy fix they can do on the spot, right? Wrong. “You need to go to the main branch,” the teller told me in Chinese, handing me a slip of paper with hastily scrawled directions, also written in Chinese. At home this would have been annoying, but in an unfamiliar city in which I still hadn’t gotten my bearings or grasped the language, I just embraced the absurdity and had to laugh rather than cry.

Line at the bank

I found the main branch of the bank, a short twenty minute walk away, and was joined by one of my fellow exchange students who was facing the same problem. She was from Lesotho, a little country I learned is actually within South Africa. Because her English was better than my Chinese, we were able to commiserate about the situation as we waited for yet another hour. I wondered aloud if the situation might be different if I had chosen to study abroad in Lesotho. “Well yes,” she said, “at home they assist you. But here in China you’re just on your own.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. This would be the recurring theme throughout my journey in China, whether it was sorting out my arrival or my eventual return home. Not only are many of the professionals in China unable or unwilling to help you, their offices look as disorganized as they feel. My school’s main office was stacked high with cardboard boxes and old computer equipment, looking more like a hoarder’s apartment than an office at a major university. This sloppiness and disorganization extends even to the medical system, which brings me to the hospitals.

My first hospital visit was scheduled in advance. Part of applying for a residence permit is a mandatory medical exam, which includes everything from an EKG to a chest x-ray, as well as blood tests for HIV and syphilis. I never heard an explanation as to why they did this, but my guess is it’s all about the HIV and syphilis. Nor did I find out what they do with you if you are indeed found to have some contagious disease. Deportation seems a little extreme, but compared to summary execution or reeducation-through-labor camps I guess “extreme” is all relative. The irony of getting a chest x-ray before living in Beijing wasn’t lost on me either. Maybe their hope is to find every pre-existing case of lung disease they can so they don’t get all the credit. In any case, the exam is very thorough, and the first show of China’s ability to literally put its fingers into your personal life.

On the morning of the exam, my fellow exchange students and I all gathered in my university’s apartotel lobby (See below. I didn’t know it was a thing either.) to be bussed out to the hospital. It was still in those earliest weeks, and in spite of a pretext that should scare anyone—today I’m going to a Chinese hospital for my mandatory medical exam—I was still able to approach it with morbid curiosity and even a little excitement. As I stood waiting to be herded on to one of the busses, I chatted with a fellow American student. “I always get nervous going into exams like this,” she said, “I mean, what if it turns out I actually have AIDS?” As I wondered about her lifestyle, I began to hear the shrill twang of instructions being shouted in Chinese. We were starting to board. I think there were five busses, four filled only with Koreans, the fifth reserved for the people from everywhere else. At least that’s how it felt. Even in the exchange student community we Anglophones were completely outnumbered.

The bus ride was long, taking us well beyond Beijing’s fifth ring road. In the normal world this would be like driving to a completely different city, but here we were merely going to another part of the city, a more quiet and creepy part. If there was a scenic route to this hospital, we didn’t take it. Something about the gray cityscape reminded me of old war movies. The dreary apartment blocks, barbed wire fences, and propaganda billboards passing by the window made me feel as if we should have been riding in cattle cars rather than comfortable busses. When we finally arrived at the hospital, it did little to lift my spirits. Even if the place had been clean and new, it would still be a particularly grim example of communist architecture. As it stood, it was not only oppressive, but dilapidated, its color palette reduced to rust and Bolshevik gray. A sad collection of trash cans sat rotting in front of us as we disembarked from our busses. Weeds grew happily in every direction, while shady looking men with their verifiably shady black taxis (hei che) milled around and smoked outside the entrance. These are the illegal taxis you take if you’re in a hurry and willing to overlook the risk of getting shaken down or kidnapped.

Some edifying propaganda from our journey. Take THAT, everywhere else!

After yet another wait in the longest line I had ever seen, we were released into the hospital to make our own way to the various exam rooms. The first stop was to get our blood drawn (surprise surprise), which was done by friendly women who weren’t wearing gloves. After that disconcerting encounter, I stepped out into the hall to see a pair doctors in surgical masks enthusiastically waving me towards another open door. As I bounced from room to room, exam to exam, the whole thing started to feel like the carnival midway: “Step right this way! We have your chest x-ray right here!” I can say this for the hospital, it may have been the only place in China that seemed to operate with any efficiency. Each test was so quick it seemed to be over as soon as it began. I’d walk into a room and suddenly many pairs of hands would be pulling up my shirt and sticking electrodes on my chest, and then—done. On to the next room. The whole thing probably took less than fifteen minutes. So again I found myself on the blighted street, a little dazed, left to find a (legitimate) taxi ride home.

Outside the hospital. No, really.

I couldn’t have known it at the time, but this would be the easy hospital visit. My next trip was not planned in advance, and not nearly as pleasant. That story is just another example of China’s ability to top itself, and to throw something unexpected at you just when you think the worst is over. As time went on, my friends and I began to see it as a contest: us vs. China. In other words, we were keeping score. Each time we met, we would discuss whether we had “won” or China had. Did it manage to break our spirit today, or did we stay resolute? After making it home from my medical exam, I felt I had won. But it wasn’t over. “If you thought that first hospital visit was weird,” China seemed to be saying, “just see what I have in store for you next. . .”

My flight left Chicago at 7:20 pm. The plan was to fly over the pole and reach Beijing at about 9:45 pm local time. Anyone familiar with traveling great distances East or West knows this presents a problem. If I were to go to bed a couple hours after takeoff (the time I normally would), that would leave me rested and ready to take on the day right at the tail-end of Beijing’s evening. I didn’t want that. So I stayed up as long as I could. This meant keeping myself busy with reading, studying Chinese, and having a near-panic attack at the realization of how little Chinese I actually knew.

I was flying on American, a Boeing 777, which gave me some comfort. This in spite of being on an airline which can’t seem to arrive or depart on time, and whose service is a notch below IHOP’s. This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in their ability to keep a plane in the air, but I have faith in the 777. This is because it’s one of few planes that has never had a hull-loss incident, meaning there’s never been a crash where the whole plane was destroyed/sunk to the bottom of the ocean. I wouldn’t say I have a fear of flying. I don’t have to be dragged, trembling, onto the plane. But my imagination gets especially vivid when I ponder what a crash would be like.

The other reason I like 777s is that they’re relatively new. 747s were flying when Roger Moore was 007. The 777, by contrast, was designed in my lifetime, and in fact was the first plane to have been designed entirely on the computer. An added comfort is that many of them have been outfitted with fancy new touch screens, with which you can watch movies and TV shows. For me, this is a roundabout way to practice Chinese since they had a huge selection of Hong Kong and Mainland films on my last overseas flight.

Would you fly on a plane this outdated?

I was not so lucky on this flight to China. At the front of every section were flickering old tube TVs showing clearly ancient camcorder-quality footage of the American outdoors. You’ve seen these videos before: Slow panning shots of Yosemite, bubbling streams, babbling brooks, frolicking bears. Along with the spa music, I assume these videos are meant to pacify people like me who are already mentally planning how to survive for a week on a piece of wing floating in the Pacific. I couldn’t help but be reminded of a particular scene from South Park…

This plane was even old enough to still have ashtrays. I looked up to see that they had installed the always-illuminated “no smoking” signs, and wondered why they hadn’t bothered to remove the ash trays at the same time. It made me wonder what else they had forgotten to do. Replace worn bolts? Change the oil? The other red flag was the empty seats. I’ve only ever been on full flights, usually with people waiting on standby. But this time I sat next to an empty seat. In fact, the whole rear section of the plane was half empty. Could it be that people weren’t just chomping at the bit to go to China?

I was also seated in the exit row, meaning I had no no window. This was frustrating as we made our final approach to Beijing. I like to see the city from the air as I’m flying in. It usually gives me a sense of the place’s size, and I figured that would never be more true than flying into the largest city I’ve ever visited. I looked around in vain for open windows, across the aisle, back to the row behind me. Everyone was awake, but no one had their windows open. What is wrong with these people, I thought. What could possibly be more interesting than the city they’re about to land in? After the touchdown I couldn’t see coming, the excitement set in. I was at Beijing Capital Airport, the same airport that Richard Nixon flew into in 1972 and began the historic rapprochement between the US and China. Thinking about the magnitude of this, I realized that my journey was really happening. Now there was no going back.

Getting into the airport was easy. We zipped into the gate and were off the plane faster than in any American airport I’ve visited (China gets major points for efficiency.) Getting out was not as easy. In fact, it was as awkward as I could make it. After using my clumsy Chinese to buy as many bottles of water as I could carry in case I got stranded, I went down to the massive taxi pick-up level. Here they had us line up, and as taxis became available they would point and direct us to the nearest one. As I approached my taxi, I managed to topple my luggage cart and spill my 170 lbs of bags into the street. Several people, including the cab driver, rushed to help. I appreciated their concern, but saw their expressions change to annoyance when they discovered just how heavy my bags were. After stuffing them all into the cab’s trunk, which further provoked the ire of the driver (I think he was keeping fragile electrical equipment back there), I told him the name of my University in Chinese. He replied in a series of completely unintelligible sentences, and we were off.

Driving into a city like Beijing, especially at night, is surreal, almost frightening. After passing the tollbooths out of the airport, you find yourself among a sea of cars on an enormous, unlined expanse of pavement, which gradually narrows into a real highway. All of the lights had an aura of thick, polluted air, as if I were looking at everything through a sheet of gauze. In the darkness alongside the highway, enormous Chinese characters, glowing red, were suspended from the tops of high-rises. We had to have been on the road for at least 45 minutes, and it gave me a real sense of just how huge the city is. There’s another skyscraper, you think, and there’s another superhighway, over and over again. Until finally we stopped in a relatively sleepy neighborhood which I took to be my university’s.

The Drive

The driver gestured out the window and said something that, again, I didn’t understand a word of. I peered outside, and saw a dark street lined with dark buildings. I had a vague idea of where my apartment was in relation to campus, but it’s a big campus and without the google maps teat I didn’t know which side I was being dropped on. Even if I had known, I wouldn’t have been able to articulate this to the driver. But as luck would have it, I recognized the name of a nearby building. “Liyun Apartotel,” it said in big, bright, beautiful letters. I didn’t know what an “apartotel” was, but that name! I had seen it everywhere in my admission materials. And in my exhausted state, I even thought it might have been where my apartroom was. I decided that was good enough for me.

So I was left on the street with my bags, alone. It was past midnight now, and all of the shops and restaurants had closed. I dragged my three suitcases (plus backpack) through the only opening in the Apartotel’s fence (which took some time to find) and into the building. Feeling empowered after my victory over the revolving door, I approached the front desk and asked the concierge in Chinese whether this was, indeed, the Number 2 International Students Dorm. The woman at the desk curtly told me this was Number 3. My heart sank. I asked how to get to Number 2 from here, and the woman simply pointed out the door.

I turned and looked, just to make sure I hadn’t missed something. Outside were the same shuttered buildings and streetlights. “‘I’m sorry,” I might have said, “but I just flew halfway across the world. So before I go wandering towards the southeast. . . in the dark. . . with all of my luggage. . . could you be a little more detailed about where I’m supposed to go?” Unfortunately, my more than 24 hours of travel had left my Chinese as lacking as my sense of direction. So I politely asked if she could write down directions for me.

“Write down?” she repeated back in Chinese, her eyes widening. She looked at me as if I had asked for nuclear launch codes. I gave a timid nod, at which point she sighed, rolled her eyes, and pulled a piece of paper from behind her desk. She drew a little map which actually made good sense, and showed me that, thankfully, No. 2 dorm was on the same street. See, I wanted to say, was that so hard? But good manners prevailed, and since I had apparently ruined her night by asking for help, I opted instead for “thank you.”

Crossing a street as large as the one I had to cross (6 lanes, plus 2 for bikes) can only work one of two ways: You can either go all the way to the next big intersection and wait for the crosswalk, or you can use one of the above ground pedestrian walkways which are placed quite regularly along the road. As it happens, one of these walkways was much closer than the nearest intersection. The drawback is walking up and down two flights of stairs. Picture me slowly ascending the stairs two bags at a time, then leaving them on the landing to go back down to get my heaviest bag, then repeating the process. In retrospect, it’s really pretty funny. But that’s not what I thought at the time. At the time I thought I was all alone in a big city in the dark, and if someone wanted to jump me, or take one of my bags while I was busy climbing stairs with the other two, nothing was going to stop them.

My street

Things started looking up when I saw, directly on the other side of the walkway, “Beijing Normal University No. 2 Int-.” The rest of the letters were burned out. But still, home was within sight! My joy faded when I saw another figure on the dark street below, pacing back and forth with what looked like a drunken stagger in front of my apartment. I cautiously corralled all three of my bags down the stairs at once, eyeing him warily. Turns out he was actually one of my building’s security guards. Lesson 1 from China: your first impression is usually not only wrong, but the total opposite of the reality.

I had made it, but there was one more hurdle: checking in. I entered a dark, empty lobby lit by a single eerie blue light. It looked like the set of a David Lynch movie. With me in this bad dream was a lone security guard. I leave it to you to guess whether he spoke English or not. I went to the unmanned concierge desk and stood there, waiting for no one. This got a laugh from the guard, and after a short game of charades I discovered I had to knock on the door behind the desk. I was willing to try anything at this point, so I crawled under the desk’s only opening (one of those with a horizontal trap door things that flips up to let people pass. This one wouldn’t budge). I gave the door a few taps, and scurried back out from behind the counter.

After a moment of silence I looked, incredulous, towards the security guard who was now joined by his staggering friend from outside. They both laughed again, nodding as if to reassure me I had done the right thing. Just when I began to think they were screwing with me, a woman poked her head out the door behind the desk, squinting into the lobby. “American?” she asked upon seeing me. I said yes, and she shuffled, yawning, out of the closet-sized room. I peeked back to see a bed, and felt another pang of embarrassment once I registered that it was 1 am (I’ve since found out they work 24-hour shifts and do actually sleep back there.)

At this point I was a sweaty, disheveled mess. Running on just a few hours of uncomfortable sleep had made the outdoor wrestling match with my luggage that much more difficult. My Chinese was reduced to grunting and pointing, but somehow, miraculously, I signed a piece of paper which produced the keys to my room. Except for going to the wrong elevator first (could this night ever end?) I made it to my room without difficulty. But of course it turns out the difficulty was IN my room.

When I moved out of my apartment in Norman, I was meticulous about cleaning it out. This was easy since it was gently-used to begin with. So when left it, there was maybe a little dust on the desk and a slight color change on two little spots above the window where I had used toothpaste as Spackle. For this, I was charged over $300 in painting and cleaning fees. By that standard, the condition of my Chinese apartment probably translates to about $10,000. The hot pink (not kidding) walls were riddled with cracks, scuff marks, and what, on CSI, they refer to as “splatter patterns.” There were half broken picture hangers still lodged into the walls, including one that says “sweet home” (the irony of which was lost on me at the time.) The room was so worn and lived-in I wondered for a moment if I had walked into someone else’s. When I realized this narrow pink cubicle was, indeed, mine, I felt an intense loneliness. I laid down on my rock hard bed under the buzzing fluorescent lights, and gave in for the night. What I wanted to do was get my bearings, to see and get to know this new, mysterious city I was to live in. But there was no place to go in the middle of the night. And even if there was, I was unable communicate with anyone here. I was trapped in this little room that I could not make feel like home, the previous tenant’s decorations notwithstanding.

It would get better after this, and I would get adjusted, though my experiences that first night only hinted at the weirdness I would see on a day-to-day basis China. The lesson I’m still learning is to abandon all expectations. People will tell you this, and I thought I had done it pretty thoroughly before I left the US. But if I could go back and talk to myself a month ago, I’d say this: Don’t kid yourself. You have no idea what it’s going to be like, what’s going to bring you joy, what’s going to make you laugh, and what’s going to challenge you. There’s a lot more to say about this, and about a great many other things in China. There will be later posts about the food, the people, and the cultural differences I’ve observed in my short time here. But for now, I’ll leave it with the close of my first night, and the realization that my “welcome” in Beijing, like so many things, was not what I expected.

“There’s no better Chinese food in this city.” So said our waiter on our second visit to Fung’s Kitchen this week, and I’m inclined to agree with him. As my (perhaps limited) experience with Chinese food goes, I’ve had nothing that quite compares to the variety and uniqueness of the flavors on their menu.

The subject of my first review on this blog, Golden Phoenix (which I was very sad to find out closed due to a fire), was an Asian restaurant that dabbled in everything on its enormous menu: a little Vietnamese, a little Chinese, even some of the same dishes that Fung’s offers. In fact, Golden Phoenix is just a few blocks south of Fung’s in Oklahoma City’s bustling “Asian District.” But those are the only comparison to be drawn. Fung’s is all Chinese. Any question of its authenticity can be settled by looking at its menu. And by that I mean the Chinese menu.

Yes, I found out by a happy accident that Fung’s actually carries two different dinner menus. One is marked with a little “A”, which I assume must stand for “American,” and which they must give to people that don’t quite look, er. . . local. It offers all of the Chinese food you’ve probably heard of before: spring rolls, sweet and sour chicken, moo goo gai pan, even the dreaded egg roll. All I can say is don’t waste your time with that. Ask for the “other” menu and buckle up, because it’s impossible not to try something new and interesting.

On all of my visits, the place has been mostly full, and my good friends (Sophie and Grace) and I have definitely been in the minority of caucasians. It’s easy to see why; When you open the massive Chinese menu you’ll see every dish printed first in Chinese characters, and upon reading the English translation, realize that almost every one is something we have simply never heard of in this country. Take the Frogs Legs in Salt & Hot Black Pepper ($12.95), or the Duck Tongues in Salt & Hot Pepper ($12.95); good luck finding those at P.F. Chang’s. The revelation of this place, something which I’ve never experienced in this or any other American city, is that they actually serve food that people eat in China. Imagine that! So if you feel a little lost in this territory, bring a Chinese friend. Don’t have one? Make friends with one of the waiters!

I’m not kidding about that last part. We had the same waiter (named Ray) on both of our visits, and he was extremely helpful in taking us through the menu. But I’ll go chronologically here, and say that on our first night we knew nothing and decided to play it safe with familiar protein and veggies. Grace and I (both on diets, as fate would have it), after perusing the multitude of meat and seafood options, decided to share three dishes: half of a Roast Duck, Barbecue Pork, and Chinese Broccoli. You know it’s a good sign when the person taking your order says “oh good!” with genuine enthusiasm (this in response to the Chinese Broccoli). And I must say, he had reason to be pleased with our choices.

Duck, Duck, Goose!

To start, Chinese Broccoli ($9.25) is absolutely nothing like broccoli broccoli, making me wonder why it’s so named. Cooked in garlic and butter (or oyster sauce, your choice), The vegetable is dark green, soft and leafy, but with crunchy stems and a slight touch of bitter; something between bok choy and spinach. It was also maddeningly delicious, which is an achievement since, after all, we’re talking about a vegetable here.

Not Broccoli Broccoli

The Barbecue Pork ($7.50) was one of many “Chinese Barbecue” items on the menu. For those who have never had it, it’s not the smoky, cancerous Barbecue we’re used to (and don’t get me wrong, I love that stuff), but simply roasted until crispy on the outside with a sweet glaze. The pork is still tender on the inside, with a lot of flavor under a crackling, red, caramelized surface. I would also highly recommend the Pork Belly with Preserved Vegetables ($8.95)

Heeere Piggy!

But the real show-stopper here, what I’ve started identifying as “the reason to come back,” is the Roast Duck (half, $9.95). If there’s any question in your mind about what good fat tastes like, let this duck be your answer. When you walk into the restaurant you can see it displayed proudly in the middle of the room, glistening as it beckons to you in its glass case. After watching a gentlemen come out from the kitchen and hack it with a cleaver behind the glass, you’ll be able to enjoy the layers with soft fat and that tasty, gamey meat all encased in that crisp, golden skin. Sure, it may be a little difficult to eat as you have to extricate the edible parts from shards of bone, but every precious bit is worth it.

Everything but the Tongue

We were also persuaded to try the Fresh Shrimp Wonton Soup ($5.75). An absolutely huge bowl for the price, the soup is rich warm broth with dozens of shrimp dumplings happily bobbing on the surface.

I Want Wontons

On our second night Ray made a couple of recommendations, including changing our vegetable to Snow Pea Tips, claiming “they’re better than Chinese broccoli” (he was right). But ok, here it is, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: I asked Ray about the Pig Intestines ($8.25), to which he replied “They’re my favorite! But try the deep fried ones.”

Intestinal Fortitude

I came, I saw, I tasted. And believe it or not, I didn’t regret it. Intestines are pretty tasty. That’s not to say they’re for everyone, as they definitely have a distinct, musky, animal taste that I could only take in small doses. But served sliced with a spicy sauce, cooked crispy on one side, left soft (tissue-y?) on the other, they were definitely rich and interesting, if not a little overpowering.

So, where do I go from intestines? Not anywhere, as it turned out that night, because this food will fill you up. Four dishes split between three people is more than enough here. Three would probably do it (two meats and the vegetable). Taking that into account, did you notice the prices? You can get half a duck for less than $10! Not to mention some of the best-prepared pork you’ve ever had for even less. So if you come with friends, you’re looking at about $8-9 per person, which for exotic, fun food from a faraway land is pretty incredible. They also bring out rice with the meal, in addition to complimentary orange wedges and the obligatory fortune cookies before you leave.

Orange you happy you read this far down?

Whether you’re an adventurous daredevil, or just want a good, hearty meal, Fung’s Kitchen may just change your conception of Chinese food and become a new favorite. It’s definitely become one of mine. Maybe next time I’ll try the duck tongues.

*Fung’s Kitchen is open daily for lunch and dinner, as well as Dim Sum starting at 10 am Saturdays and Sundays. A very good Dim Sum at that (I would highly recommend the Shrimp Dumplings and Barbecue Pork Buns).